Many medical applications involve the infusion of dangerous medicines such as toxic solutions, radioactive fluid or other dangerous fluid into a patient's body. These dangerous medicines include chemotherapy, biologically active substances, radiosensitizers and cytotoxics, which may be infused directly into a patient through an intravenous tube. Other medical applications involve infusing the fluid to a medical device located within or in proximity to the patient. In the case of toxic fluid syringe injections, current methods of syringe shielding may not provide the patient or the handler with the total protection needed in terms of radiation shielding or containment of a spill or leak of the infusion system.
In a typical application, toxic fluid are supplied to a patient via a delivery system, and then the delivery system is flushed with saline or some other non-hazardous dilutant. The infusion, removal and flushing of the radioactive fluid often results in the use of several syringes and fluid lines that must be interchanged in the infusion system with a resulting increase in the possibility that toxic fluid will leak or spill, thereby contaminating the surrounding environment. Syringe shields are currently available and are generally made to shield a syringe filled with toxic fluid by employing lead as a means of shielding against toxic radioactivity. However, these devices protect patients and handlers from radioactive fluid rather than containment of potential leaks or spills of toxic fluid.
In view of the above, there exists a need for a system and method for enabling toxic solutions such as used in chemotherapy to be safely infused with a significantly reduced risk of contacting the handler(s) performing the infusion.